Battle of Cannae (1018)

The Battle of Cannae was fought in 1018 between the army of the Byzantine Empire and the rebellious Lombard-Norman army of Melus fo Bari.

Melus had previously rebelled against the Byzantines from 1007 to 1011, conquering much of Apulia for himself before being forced to flee to Salerno after a Greek counterattack. In 1016, he travelled to the shrine of St. Michael at Gargano and enlisted the help of several warlike Norman pilgrims in conquering Apulia from the Greeks, and, in 1017, an army of Norman adventurers joined forces with Melus' Lombard rebels at Capua. The Byzantine general Basil Boioannes had a detachment of the elite Varangian Guard sent to assist him in crushing the rebellion, and the two armies met at Cannae, the site of the historic battle fought during the Punic Wars.

This time, the Romans were victorious at Cannae, annihilating the Lombard rebels and Norman sellswords and ending the rebellion. Melus fled to the Papal States and eventually to the court of Holy Roman Emperor Henry II, while Boioannes hired the remnants of the Norman force as mercenaries and sent them to garrison Troia.